Peace Culture And Violence

Peace, Culture, and Violence is a collection of essays that examine the forms of violence that permeate everyday life and explore sources of non-violence by considering topics such as thug culture, language, hegemony, police violence, war, terrorism, gender, and anti-Semitism.

Through this volume, UNESCO aims to further reflection on the major changes facing the international community today: how to replace the existing culture of violence with a culture of peace. The text presents contributions by eminent peace researchers, philosophers, jurists and educators on the multiple facets of a culture of peace. The contributors underline the universal nature of a culture of peace - some delve into its very concept, others analyze the manner in which it is achieved, while others concentrate on the global endeavour to which UNESCO is dedicated.

(Re)Constructing Cultures of Violence and Peace brings together eleven original essays that were presented at the Third Global Conference on Cultures of Violence held in August 2002 in Prague. Covering an array of violence-related subjects, and a range of methodologies—textual, historical, theoretical, quantitative—the resulting volume is a multifaceted exploration of how cultures of violence are constructed, and how they can be deconstructed and replaced with cultures of peace. In part one, the authors aim to map and describe some of the important cultures of violence in our modern world—interstate war, civil war, criminal punishment, religious conflict, hooliganism—as an initial step towards understanding violence as a cultural construction. Part two explores aspects of the (re)construction of culture of peace. Specifically, the challenges encountered in attempting to conceptualise, study, or transform cultures of violence are examined. A common theme throughout the book is that violence is a fluid social and cultural construct—it is made by individuals, groups, and social forces. The implications of this are more than simply ontological: if violence is made, it can also be unmade; if cultures of violence are socially and politically constructed, they can also be de-constructed.

This is an outstanding collection of essays about the many faces of violence during and after the Cold War. Building a bridge between political philosophy and the analysis of current affairs, as well as between the author's personal experience and the collective dramas of the twentieth century, Pierre Hassner stresses two major features of our time: the decline of interstate and global war as a realistic prospect and the increase in domestic and trans-national violence.

. These essays will provide new insights and focus for understanding internal violence and its cultural connections to a broad audience of scholars, policy makers, and students of international politics and culture.

This volume brings together leading sociologists and anthropologists to break new ground in the study of cultural violence. First sketched in Raphael Lemkin’s seminal writings on genocide, and later systematically defined by peace studies scholar Johan Galtung, the concept of cultural violence seeks to explain why and how language, symbols, rituals, practices, and objects are so frequently in the crosshairs of socio-political change. Recent conflicts in the Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia, along with renewed public interest in the repertoire of violence applied to the control and erasure of indigenous populations, highlights the gaps in our understanding of why cultural violence occurs, what it consists of, and how it relates to other forms of collective violence.

In identity-based conflicts, what a person learns can become whom a person learns to hate. This book explores the unique position occupied by educators during protracted ethnic conflict. As transmitters of social authority, educators occupy a position in society capable of supporting repressive constructs or challenging social inequalities. Educators who are seen to legitimize the social order may be seen as symbolic markers of the dominant group, while educators who challenge the social order can be perceived as upstarts or threats that seek to subvert social authority. By surveying the perceptions, perspectives, experiences and opinions of Israeli tertiary teachers, this book explores the positionality of educators as agents who wield “both an instrument for oppression and a tool for liberation” (Alzaroo and Hunt 2003, 165). Peace education is a platform to achieve a global culture of peace by recognizing and delegitimizing violence. Using future visioning, this book considers that a primary obstruction to achieving peace is the ability to conceive of peace and asks three questions: do university educators challenge conflict narratives in the classroom? What obstacles exist to prevent educating for peace in Israel? How do educators imagine the future?